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Home Ceramic art

Isabelle Mackay-Sim: This Dream of Flesh

August 28, 2020
in Ceramic art
  • Isabelle Mackay-Sim, This dream of flesh #1, 2018, glazed earthenware, 45.5 x 58 x 42 cm. All photos by Luis Power.
  • This dream of flesh #3, 2018, glazed midfire, 41 x 40 x 42.5 cm
  • This dream of flesh #4, 2018, glazed earthenware, 38 x 49 x 40 cm
  • This dream of flesh #10, 2019, glazed midfire, 43 x 53 x 42 cm
  • This dream of flesh #10 (alternate view)
  • This dream of flesh #1 (detail)
  • This dream of flesh #3 (detail)
  • This dream of flesh #4 (detail)
  • This dream of flesh #10 (detail)

Isabelle Mackay-Sim: This Dream of Flesh, 2018-2019

Isabelle Mackay-Sim’s body of work, This dream of flesh, reframes imperfect bodies through the abstraction and fragmentation of the figure. This series of body-scale ceramic sculptures depicts bodily forms that are often rejected by mainstream Western culture, and renders them in seductive pastel-coloured satin glaze. The result is a bubblegum fleshiness that simultaneously attracts and repels. Abstraction allows the work to be read compositionally, as a form, rather than a figure carrying with it the stigmatised connotations of softness and corpulence. These works aim to affect conflicting emotions in the viewer in order to encourage prolonged looking and, ultimately, a reconsideration of the marginalised flawed body.

The ceramic medium is ideally suited to depictions of the body: Mackay-Sim allows the soft weight of the clay to slump in places, creating naturalistic flesh-like folds. The artist’s own persona is visibly etched on the figure via the emphasis of pinch marks produced when handbuilding in clay. This texture leaves a tangible impression of the body on the surface of the work, and mimics puckered and pock-marked skin. Dark negative space beneath the forms leaves the underside unseen, suggesting private spaces that are mysterious and erotic.

Photos by Luis Power

Tags: Isabelle Mackay Sim

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